Blazerman

With rifle season coming up I thought I would share some past experiences of my hunts from long ago. I first started hunting as a teenager back in the seventies and hunted every year for probably 25 years. There was a group of us that grew up together on the same street and we had been hunting squirrels and rabbits for a while so one year we decided to give deer hunting a try. We all managed to borrow rifles and had been shooting them and we thought we were ready. One guy in our group had an uncle who had a farm in Lewis county Missouri, which is in the northeast corner of the state, so we headed up there to see what kind of place it was. We drove up on the Friday before opening day to check the place out and it turned out his place was mostly pasture with a small section of woods where a creek ran through. Before sunrise, after parking by the gate, the four of us stationed ourselves around the section of woods and waiting for it to get light. I remember it was cold and windy so I sat on the ground behind a big log trying to get out of the wind. It must have worked because I fell asleep and was woken up by a twig snapping and when I looked up, there was a big doe and two smaller deer not twenty feet away. I almost jumped up and ran at first, because they were so close but managed to stay still and watch them until they had moved on. Does were not legal to shoot back then unless you had a landowner tag. Looking back, I am not sure I was ready to shoot a deer on my first hunt anyway so I was happy to let them walk away. I did eventually shoot a small eight point buck from that small patch of woods but once we had hunted there a few years we decided we needed a better place to hunt. So one morning during the season we loaded up and started driving around looking for a better spot. During the drive we crested a hill on a gravel road and when we got to the top we could see a group of deer feeding alongside the road at the bottom of the hill. When we stopped, we had stopped in front of a farm house with a driveway on the road. After checking out the deer and being so close to this house we decided the only thing to do was knock on the door and ask the land owner if he would mind us shooting the deer. I will never forget him looking us over then looking down the road at the deer and back at us and he finally says, “Let me get this straight. You were driving down this road and saw these deer and now you want to know if I mind if you shoot them”. We said “yup, that’s right”. He then said,”of course you can shoot them. You can shoot every deer you see as far as I’m concerned. I call them wood rats because all they do is eat my beans and corn and there are way too many of them. I’m just amazed you stopped to ask”. So one of the guys proceeds to get out a rifle and shoot a bucket racked 8 pointer. All the deer, included the one he shot, run into the field next to the road. We then ask the farmer if we can go get the deer and he says sure. That turned out to be the beginning of a long mutually beneficial relationship. That was probably about 1977 and we have been hunting on his farm(s) ever since. I say mutually beneficial because in turn for letting us hunt we ended doing farm chores pretty much all year on the farm and the landowner has become a good friend. Although I quit hunting once my son got seriously into fall sports, the others guys still hunt there along with their sons now. And all of them help with the chores. The first few years at his place were kind of rough. He has over 800 acres of pasture and timber with crops planting in the bottoms by a creek. When we first started hunting there we asked him if anybody else hunted it and he said no. What we should of asked was does anybody have permission to hunt because all kinds of people were hunting on the property. Neighbors and friends of neighbors all knew he didn’t hunt so they all felt there was no problem with them being there. I remember the first few years we had plenty of people walking around along with guys in the back of a truck driving through shooting at deer. Saw another group hunting from a dune buggy. We when asked the landowner about these other people he said guess there are more people hunting my place then I realized. Finally we had an incident happen that made us think twice about hunting there. While walking back to the woods after lunch one day we heard some shots coming from the other side of the hill. So we walked over to investigate and there was a guy standing by the edge of the woods staring into them. When we walked up to him we said “shoot a deer?” And he said “not sure, trying to figure that out”. It was very foggy with a light rain that day and we said, ‘what did you see, a doe or a buck? And he says “not sure, I didn’t really see it”. So we all looked at each other and finally said “well what did you shoot at? And he said “I heard a deer and shot at it”. We said “how did you know it was a deer”? And he said “you know what a deer sounds like, don’t you! I have been hunting long enough to know when I hear one”. After that we told the landowner we might have to hunt somewhere else and when he asked why we told him about the sound shooter. He said “look, I have given you guys permission to hunt and not any of these other people. So from now on, every time you come across someone else hunting you tell them you know me and tell them I have said no one else should be hunting my place”. It took a couple years of us telling everyone we saw what he said but finally we had the place to ourselves. Since then we have taken a lot of deer off the place including many big bucks.

Kayser, i was thinking the same thing.

I have Paw Paw trees at my place by the Meramec river and that is it. It is an understory tree that doesn't get more then 10'-12' high but will spread out in large groups. Mine didn't have any fruit this year but in years past it would be loaded. The critters love them- especially the coons. I was told in the old days people would used them to make bread.

I am one of the folks who target spotted bass in the river. From the MDC website Spotted bass Since the mid-1980s, Conservation Department fisheries biologists have noticed that spotted (Kentucky) bass have increased dramatically in portions of the Meramec, Big and Bourbeuse rivers where they were historically absent. In those rivers, spotted bass rarely seem to reach the 12-inch length limit, grow slowly and have been shown to compete and hybridize with native smallmouth bass. While there is no doubt that smallmouth have been affected by habitat alterations, the continual march of spotted bass further upstream each year concerned biologists. Smallmouth bass numbers appear to have declined in many areas and biologists believe spotted bass may be part of the reason. In response, the Conservation Department removed the minimum length limit on spotted bass and increased the daily limit to 12. Anglers in these three rivers can help slow the increase of spotted bass by learning spotted bass identification and taking some home. Because of these management changes by MDC I now make an effort to target spotted bass when fishing on the Meramec. I do this by fishing woody cover in the longer slower pools using mostly a jig and trailer or spinnerbait. I have found I can flip or pitch my jig/trailer and catch mostly spots by target laydowns and root balls in slower pools. I do this because I like to eat them and in my opinion they are just as good to eat as crappie. I still catch the occasional smallmouth and when I do they are normally bigger older fish which are a blast to catch and they always released

I was in my Blazer jet boat. PM me if you want to go sometime.

Hit the Meramec for a bit yesterday afternoon and did real well for the few hours we fished. Put in at Redhorse at 3:30 and headed upstream a little ways. Had the whole river to ourselves and the river is in real nice shape. Still low but real clear and the algae is just sticking to the bottom now. Not floating in the current like it was all summer. We got quite a few fish- mostly smallmouth and spots. Probably had about 20 each in about 3 hours. I caught mine on a spinnerbait and jig and trailer. My wife got hers on a Husky jerkbait. She had the most fish, including google eye and bluegill and the biggest smallmouth. I caught more spotted bass on the spinnerbait. We kept 5 of the biggest spots to eat. Everything else was let go. Looks like the trees are turning early this year. Very nice colors already.

On our annual White river trip I always save a few stockers for eating. I filet them and pitch the heads and skin and lay the filets on a sheet of aluminum foil. Sprinkle with lemon, rub some butter on them and season with salt, pepper, and some Laurie’s season salt. Lay the aluminum foil right on top of bbq grill. No need to wrap them up. Once they turn white and the meat is flaking apart, take them off and enjoy. You will be surprised at how good they are.

The water generation can be a problem if you're wanting to wade. If you are unlucky and they are running water when you're there you can always rent a boat at Bull Shoals state park marina , which is right below the dam. Or Gaston's and other resorts have them as well. They have half day and full day rentals depending on your needs.

Ness, I agree Cabela’s (CAB) knows how to make money but I think the stock run up has more to do with gun sales than anything else. Smith & Wesson, (SWHC) and Ruger, (RGR) stocks have been soaring this year and that has carried over to Cabela’s and probably BPS too, (although there not public).

If you’re looking for wall hangers you may have to travel some. Around Springfield you can find public places to hunt deer. But if you're from Minnesota you are probably used to seeing big body deer with the occasionally big thick rack. You won't see many of those in southern Missouri. There are a few taken every year but they are rare in the southern half of the state. For big deer with big racks the numbers are better the farther you go north. The Missouri river is generally considered the dividing line for the biggest deer. North of it you will find bigger body deer with bigger racks. There are more crops grown north of the Missouri river and the deer are better fed. Also the Missouri river water shed produces many big bucks every year.

Just got the email from the MDC that said the state wide burn ban has been lifted.

Might help ease the drought some. Too bad it looks like it will be over Labor Day weekend. The weather service is already warning of Flash flooding from small creeks. Be careful while camping.

Anyone who has read any of my post before probably know i can usually be found on the Meramec upstream from the k bridge. Which was where i was on that day. When I first got my place i didn't have my Blazer. I had canoes and i was in one on that day about 5-6 years ago. Put in at Plum ford. Coldwater i agree that probably nothing would of been different but i know i wouldn't of felt so defenseless. For the record i also have a 380. Don't always have it on me but it is usually close by. Back when i floated and camped on the river i had a 12 gauge shotgun with a short barrel that I carried. It is legal but wouldn't be much good for hunting. I usually stashed in the tent with me at night and i always felt better knowing it was there.

Yup, always have my pistol with me in my boat. A few years ago I was out fishing by myself in the middle of the week and I had an unpleasant encounter with some meth cooks on a gravel beach. They were actually tucked under some trees off the beach but there was no mistaking the smell. Once they saw me floating by the scrambled to grab their weapons and walked out on the beach in a threatening manner. They both had long guns and never really pointed them at me but they wanted to be sure I saw them. One said something like “what’s up” and I said nothing “just doing a little fishing” and he said “catching anything?”. The other one was glaring at me the whole time and finally said “you never saw nothing here and we don’t want to see you again”. I said “no problem. I don’t plan on coming back.” I was a little freaked out to say the least. Once I got a ways away from them I tried my cell phone and, of course, had no signal. When I finally did get a signal and called the Franklin county sheriff, they asked where I had seen them. I couldn’t really tell them exactly where I had seen them. All I could do was give them general area. She asked if they had a boat and I told her I hadn’t seen one on the beach. So they weren’t really too interested since the chances of them finding them were pretty slim. I told myself after that it was time to start carrying and I got my CC not long after and always carry my pistol now.

You might want to try Plum Ford to Shady beach on the Meramec. The folks at Shady Beach can shuttle you to Plum Ford and you will float back to your vehicle. There is some nice water there that doesn’t get much pressure. I think it is 6.5 or 7 miles and should have decent water for floating and plenty of spots to wade and fish. Shady beach is off highway K south of St. Clair right at the K bridge. For $20 they will shuttle you or you can rent a canoe for a little more. 1 hour from downtown St. Louis or 20 minutes from 6 flags. Shady Beach (636) 629-8266 136 Shady Beach Ln, St Clair, MO 63077

Stl, if you can get the lawn established this fall and the weeds try and come back you can use any lawn weed control as needed to treat the weeds in the spring. Like Dutch said the best weed control is a heathly established lawn. The best thing to do in the spring is to go ahead and start a lawn weed control and fertilazation program. You can use a local service or do it yourself with something like Scott's. if the back area needs to be graded i would try and get it done before you do anything else. If you can slit seed you won't have to worry about the birds. If you don't be sure and rake it in lightly and roll it. Once you begin to water the birds should stay away.

I my other life I spent 20 years in lawn care and landscaping and what I have read here so far is mostly what you shouldn’t do. First thing I would recommend is going to a quality lawn and garden center for everything you need and all the advice you want. They should be able to answer all the questions you have here plus anything else that comes up. Forget the big box stores or the local hardware store. If money is no concern, hire someone to sod it all and you will have an instant lawn. But you will be looking at a several thousand for sure. Good sod can grow on any half way decent soil because you will be bringing in an inch of topsoil with the sod. And it can be laid on pebble size rocks with no problem. But I would wait till fall and even then you might not be able to get it this year unless they bring it in from out of state. If you don’t want to spend 1000s on sod, then you will be seeding. The soil test is good. Sounds like your good there. When trying to start a yard by seed, seeding in fall is always best. You get perfect temps and (hopefully) plenty of rain. Plus, and most important, you avoid all the competition of lawn weeds like crabgrass that will be popping as soon as it get warm next spring. If you don’t get the rain you will need to water like crazy. Forget waiting for it to snow. You will most likely miss two months of the growing season. Late August should be ok but will probably be hot and dry. If you can keep it watered it will pop quickly because of the warm ground but then the hard part is keeping it wet enough to survive. If you wait till the middle of September it might be better. K31 is great if you want to grow a pasture. If you want a lawn your kids can play on than turf type tall fescue is probably the best choice. But before you decide, what is the sun / shade mix. If you have mostly full sun TTT fescue should do well. If you have shade you might want to go with a mix of bluegrass, rye and creeping red fescue. That has always been the St. Louis area grass seed mix of choice and should do well in most of Missouri. You are doing great by eliminating the weeds now. If you can loosen up the soil by raking it that would be good. Trying to remove all the rock can be a pain but would also be good. For putting down the seed, one option is to rent a slit seeder. They make slits that the seed falls into as you move across the lawn. You will want to go in two directions if you slit seed. It is the best way but if that is not an option then broadcast the seed in a spreader. After it is down rake it in lightly and then roll it with a lawn roller, which you can also rent. The main thing you are looking for when seeding is seed to soil contact. If you have that and keep it watered it will grow. The time to fertilize is once the seed has popped and is growing. You will want to use a starter fertilizer made for new seed. Once you have mowed it twice you can fertilize again with a fall fertilizer and if needed you can do a weed control application at that time as well. I would skip the straw all together. It doesn’t really help because it brings in a lot of weed seed which will sprout along with your grass. Plus it is a pain to spread and ends up too thick in some areas and smothers the seed and blows all over your neighbor’s yard as well. And then when you try to rake it up you end up raking up a lot of new grass because the root system has gotten deep enough to hold it. Good luck.

Greasy B, you can get past Shady beach and go under the bridge but after that there is a litttle island on the left with some low water that has small boulders. Trying to get by there on the right side is dicey right now. Last time i was there I hit two different big rocks and got two new dents. Put the Blazer away after that and haven't gotten it out since. For the record I didn't hit them on the way up-hit them coming back down. Seems like heading downstream is alway tougher than going up.

Know that cave really well. When I grew up we had the last cabin on the river at Twin Springs which was just upstream from there. My cousin and I would wade down and explore it often. The fishing around there was always really good. Caught many fish at the cove right across from the cave. Use to sit on our dock and admire the view of the river and that bluff. Did you check out the spring just down from there?

Found this at Kansascity.com Outdoor section. Overland Park teen chases carp in suburbs using his own flies http://www.kansascit...hases-carp.html

Great story about getting drunk and doing stupid things while floating in the Ozarks. Wonder how many people have done this and now are wondering if they have a parasite growing in their lungs. Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/fitness/one-more-thing-to-avoid-while-drinking-swallowing-crawfish/article_e2bf80f3-ba95-552e-96e7-006be7e814b7.html#ixzz20PVAD5F5 Scientists from the CDC called in to help with the disease investigation were initially puzzled. Not by the disease so much, which is fairly common in Asian countries where raw crustaceans are part of the cuisine, but by why so many people were eating crawfish in Missouri. Before the rash of illnesses here, there had been seven cases in all of North America in the previous 40 years. Weil said a scientist at the CDC, which is in Atlanta, said to him, "In Georgia, we go canoeing and we see crawfish. It never occurred to me to eat one. What's wrong with you people?"

Chief, i was thinking the same thing.

From StlToday VAN BUREN, Mo. • The Carter County sheriff says a man has died after being bitten by a copperhead snake in southeastern Missouri. KFVS-TV reports it happened along the Current River. The man was being transported Saturday by the East Carter ambulance service when he started having trouble breathing. The ambulance crew stabilized the man at a clinic in Ellsinore, but he later died at a hospital. The man's name had not been released early Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/man-bitten-by-copperhead-in-southeast-missouri-dies/article_ad3fafde-c504-11e1-933b-001a4bcf6878.html#ixzz1zYy2otX0 First time i have ever heard of someone dying from a copperhead bite. Be careful out there!

I spent all day Saturday outside working on a backyard project and an outdoor party. So I had zero desire to spend Sunday outside again. But the wife wanted to head to the river to play in our new kayaks so Sunday morning we were river bound. With the river so low I don’t even get the Blazer out these days (I know there are plenty of people who are thrilled by that) and the way things are going, I might not get it out again till next year. But the wife talked me into buying these kayak a couple of months ago and now it looks like the best thing we did. I am really enjoying them and still enjoy wading and fishing which is a great way to stay cool. Got to the river about 8:30 and after getting the a/c fired up and food put away we loaded up the yaks and headed upstream. We stopped at the first island we came to which is not too far upstream from our place and we both beached to get started. I really didn’t expect to catch much but went ahead and set the minnow trap and rigged up both poles to fish with minnows. Didn’t take long to get a decent group of minnows and we started fishing. Ended up catching more than I thought we would. We paddled upstream around the island and would stop and fish the decent spots. I caught a few 12”-13” smallmouth, a drum and a big spotted bass. My wife caught a couple smallies plus another white bass. I always let the smallmouth go but will keep the white bass to see if we might get enough to clean. But on this trip I didn’t even bring a stringer so they were all let go. All in all it wasn’t a bad morning. By the time we paddled around the island and floated back downstream it was about noon. So we headed back for lunch and to meet up with my son, who was coming down with some friends to go tubing. Once my son and his friends were gone I was pretty wiped out and ended up crashing on the couch in the a/c while the wife read her book. Finally got up about 3:00 and told the wife I wanted to try fishing another island that is just downstream from our place. It is a classic set up with rocks and small boulders that form a decent rapids that ends up dropping to a deeper pool. She said she would join me shortly so I shot down there and threw out the minnow rig. Caught a 12” smallmouth on the first cast. Then another on the second and ended up catching 5 fish on 5 cast and each one was bigger than the last. All were smallmouth and the last one was about 15”. All these fish were caught on my wife’s rod and reel which had a bobber above the hook and split shot. She showed up about then and I told her about the smallmouth and asked if she had brought the camera because I wanted to have prove in case I caught some more. Like usual she said she did and then said show me how your catching them. I handed her rod back and threw out using my rod which didn’t have a bobber and, after about 20 seconds, felt the familiar tap, tap and set the hook. As soon as I felt the tug on the end I said I don’t think this is another smallmouth, it is probably a big drum. I was wrong! It was a good size channel cat. I was totally amazed. The most amazing part is, I was catching the fish after throwing to the deeper water, which is about 5-6 ft and letting the current swing the bait downstream below me in about 2-3 ft of water. After it sat there a short time it would get hit. Once I landed it I realized I still didn’t have a stringer. I ended up using the rope on my kayak as a stringer to keep the fish. So by now I am getting excited. Threw back out again and wham, same thing- big catfish. My wife by then is fishing a little farther down. She gets hit and ends up catching another nice white bass. I throw out again and get hung on a boulder. Wade out to get the minnow off the snag and when I do I let it sink behind the boulder and see this big channel cat rise up and eat the minnow. Set the hook and the fight is on. These rod and reels we were using are light action spinning rods with 6lb test. I am using a little #8 gold Aberdeen hook and one small split shot. So it was a blast fighting and landing these fish. Ended up catching one more nice channel cat and another white bass and a few more smallmouth before things slowed down. All the smallmouth were let go and none were deep hooked. All and all an amazing day considering it was over 100 degrees out and we were fishing in the hottest part of the day in 2-4 ft of water. One thing I did realize after we got back and I started cleaning the fish, there were thunderstorms rolling in so we must have been fishing right as the front came through. Not sure if that was why the catfish were turned on but I will be back there again on Wednesday to see if they are still there.

Gavin, you hit the nail on the head. I love to fish as much as the next guy. But this time of year I pretty much make it an early morning thing, then grab a tube and join the party. My teenage son loves to brings his friends down to the river and show them what floating in a tube is all about. They always come away talking about what a blast it is. I am sure Justin would agree that most of the people floating this time of year could care less about fishing and are there to be with friends on a Ozark stream. Check out these pics from a couple of weeks ago at Shady beach and Indian creek on the Meramec. I am pretty sure most posters on here would want np part of this scene. But to each his own.